In today’s digital world, data collection is embedded into nearly every online experience. From social media and search engines to shopping and news platforms, users constantly generate behavioral data through clicks, scrolling, hovering, and time spent engaging with content. While many people are aware that tracking exists, the actual scale and mechanisms of online surveillance often remain invisible. As a result, users participate in systems of profiling and personalization without fully understanding how their everyday actions produce data or shape the digital environments around them.

Our mission is to make online surveillance visible, understandable, and actionable through an interactive educational experience that bridges the gap between awareness and behavior. Existing privacy education often falls into two extremes: passive informational resources that fail to create behavioral understanding, or highly technical interactive tools that mainly appeal to already tech-literate audiences. Our project combines the strongest aspects of both approaches by being simultaneously instructional, interactive, and behavior-driven.

Unlike cookie banners, privacy labels, or tracker-blocking tools that operate mostly in the background, our experience explicitly connects specific user behaviors to the data collected and the inferences generated from it. Through interactive simulations and visual feedback, users can directly experience how small online actions contribute to profiling and personalization. Rather than creating fear or abstraction, we aim to provide users with practical insight, reflection, and a stronger sense of agency over their digital footprint.

We also sought to create a visual identity that reflects the themes of surveillance and digital systems. Drawing inspiration from cybernetic theory-fiction, transhumanism, and the early “Wild West” era of the internet, our design aims to feel immersive, distinct, and engaging while reinforcing the project’s core message.

Ultimately, our goal is to help users critically examine the systems they interact with every day. In a time increasingly shaped by algorithmic personalization, AI-generated content, and large-scale data collection, digital literacy must go beyond passive awareness. By combining experiential learning, behavioral insight, and intentional design, we hope to give users a more meaningful understanding of how online surveillance works—and how they can meaningfully respond to it.